Realistic Sky - clouds won't animate

jrm21

I know this has been covered before (perhaps in the old forums?) but I cannot find any answers after several forum and google searches.

I have created a scene in C8.5 and am using the "Realistic Sky" tool. Everything works as expected, except I cannot get the clouds to move in the animation.

I have played with some of the values, but the most I can get is some minuscule changes in cloud shape over time. The changes are barely noticeable around the edges of the clouds, and could be due to the changing light in the scene.

Either way, all clouds stay in place and do not move, which is what I am trying to do.

Any suggestions, settings or working links?

Dartanbeck

I'm renedering an animation right now, so I can't check exactly what right now... but you need to make HUGE changes in stuff to really get them cruisin'. The thing is that, clouds are often really slow in the sky. So the most usual settings make for really subtle (like, unnoticeable) changes. So the change that, you really need to play with the layer rotational settings in each cloud layer panel, along with the other settings that make them move with the wind or over time... can't remember what those are called on the lower left...

Anyways, try going in to the cloud layer in the RSE and, in the main cloud layer setup controls, there's stuff to do with layer rotation, I believe. Go to the end of your animation on the timeline and make a drastic change in the layer rotation. Maybe even go back to the beginning of the timeline and do the same, but opposite numbers. You'll see that you can actually make them move way too fast. So you just need to practice with some fast render settings and patience, and you'll get there ;)

jrm21

I had tried what you are suggesting but the settings didn't stick. In the RSE, I entered one set of values at the start of the animation and then entered different values at the end. While some values stuck (like the sun position) at both keyframes, the cloud settings didn't. In other words, If I set it to "1" at frame 1 and then "99" at frame 100, it would show "100" when I went back to frame #1.

I went back and tried again. The values seem to be changing as they should. Layer rotation does have an effect, but it does look funky (appears as if the cloud layer is rotating rather than the clouds moving).

In the RSE under "animation" for the cloud layer, movement speed is bumped up to the maximum 99mph. That also seemed to do nothing.

Then I found it... In the "Atmosphere" tab - Clouds Animation. I originally set the value to the 12 second length of the animation. Apparently, that value needs to be outrageously high to get visible cloud movement. I set it to 5000 seconds and then 10,000 seconds and the clouds really started to move across the sky.

Not very intuitive, especially since the RSE has a movement speed setting. That setting seems to have a relative affect on the clouds, but the number of seconds in the "Clouds Animation" setting is what really makes things happen. Still have to play with the setting to get things moving the way I want, but at least they are moving now.

Thanks for the help.

evilproducer

I was going to ask if you had selected the right cloud layer, but I see you have things kind of sorted out.

Dartanbeck

Cool. Yeah, I recall being in the same dilemma, but couldn't remember how I got it working... that's right! The animation box in the atmosphere tab before going into RSE! Bravo! Glad you've figured it out.

Another animation consideration that I'm not sure about atm, is the volumetric cloud settings, where you have a similar field to the clouds in the atmosphere tab. I imagine, due to this, that you would set a high number for a lot of change, low for less.